Windows

This question has been posed to be multiple times before, “It says the file name is too long, why can’t I delete it?” or some variation of the same issue. There is a multitude of forum postings scrawled all over the internet and it’s endless wonder telling people to go download all these programs to fix it, which either end up costing money or giving you malware and in the end they don’t even work. There are two quick and easy things to check to fix any issue pertaining to any variation of “file name too long” errors.

Check for Illegal Characters

No file name, or path can have any illegal (reserved) characters which are as follows.

\ / ? : * ” > < |

If none of these exist, you’re good to move on.

2. Make sure the path name hasn’t exceeded the maximum length

Windows limits a single path to 260 characters. This is why you might get an error when copying a file with a very long file/path name to a location that has a longer path than the file’s original location. This is most often the culprit. I’ve seen it most frequently when you download some sort of compressed container or files such as a .zip or a .iso such as I’ve done here below.

I downloaded this .iso, and used 7zip to extract it, it then created a folder with the iso’s name then duplicated it inside of itself causing my file path to be extremely long, more than the allowed 260 maximum characters in a file path.

When then attempting to delete the tree from C:\Users\Administrator\Downloads\ I was unable to and received the aforementioned dreaded errors.

I then went in and replaced the “en_expression_studio_4_ultimate_x86_msdnaa_dvd_537046” with just “en” and was able to dramatically reduce the file path length.

Now that the file path length was inside the legal character limit, I was able to successfully delete the entire tree from the C:\Users\Administrator\Downloads\ folder successfully. Bada-Bing Bada-Boom.

One of the things you often find yourself thinking is, hmm…I should probably test my windows machines for security flaws, right? I’ve decided to share some very good tools for testing security from basic button clicking to advanced security testing.

As it relates to Windows-based computers, there are seven general types of security testing tools. These are:

Port scanners

Network/OS vulnerability scanners

Application/database vulnerability scanners

Password crackers

File searching tools

Network analyzers

Exploit tools

All of these types of tools can and should be used when performing penetration tests, vulnerability assessments, and security audits on your Windows systems.

For the most part with security tools, you get what you pay for. There are, however, a handful of free tools that are a solid choice.

– Super Scan v3: Very fast and easy to use port scanner that can find live systems, look for open ports and running services, grab banner information including software versions.

As you build your compilation of security testing tools over time, you’ll find that there is no one best tool. Keep in mind that security tools are not the “easy button” for finding security vulnerabilities. That’s where Operating System, Application, Networking Knowledge, and most importantly, experience will come into play.

Where tools are required, you’ll see that the ones that are more specialized in finding specific types of vulnerabilities will provide you with the best results. It all comes down to personal preference and how comfortable you feel using each tool, but in the end your goal should be to find the greatest number of vulnerabilities, exerting the least amount of work, in the shortest amount of time. Get to know the tools on this list, use them consistently and you’ll be well on your way to a storm of work that you never thought you had before ;).